VIVICA GENAUX – mezzo soprano
A native of Fairbanks, Alaska, mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux has been lauded throughout her two-decade career for her beautiful, immediately-identifiable timbre, remarkable technique, and prowess as a singing actress. Having garnered prizes including Pittsburgh Opera's Maecenas Award, New York City Opera's Christopher Keene Award, and an ARIA Award, Vivica now enjoys interacting with young singers via masterclasses and teaching opportunities.
Engagements in the 2015 – 2016 Season take Vivica to four continents. The music of Rossini was central to her itinerary in Autumn 2015, beginning in September with performances of the title rôle in La Cenerentola with Europa Galante and Fabio Biondi at Germany's Musikfest Bremen and Italy's Reate Festival. She returned to Washington Concert Opera for Arsace in Semiramide in November.
She débuted as Mitrena in Antonio Vivaldi's Motezuma at the Festival Internacional Cervantino México in October 2015. Later, Vivica joined Carlos de Aragón in Madrid for a program of cantatas by Händel, Porpora, and Alessandro Scarlatti. Paris will hear her in February 2016 in a Farinelli programme with Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble. Spring 2016 engagements took her to Australia for her first appearance with Brisbane Baroque in April, followed by a May tour in China and Thailand with The Academy of Ancient Music. In June 2016, she returns to her native Fairbanks for a special appearance with Opera Fairbanks in Vivica and Friends.
Vivica's recording of I Capuleti ed i Montecchi with Europa Galante and Fabio Biondi was released on the Glossa label in September 2015. In November, Capuleti with the Stavanger Symfoniorkester and Biondi was the vehicle for her Norwegian début. On 2 July 2016, she revisits Romeo in Badisches Staatstheater's Operngala performance of Capuleti in Karlsruhe, Germany, before reuniting with Maestro Biondi and Europa Galante in Warsaw for a concert performance of the opera in August.
In January 2016, Vivica sang Piramo in Johann Adolf Hasse’s Piramo e Tisbe with Europa Galante in Kraków, Poland. A new rôle, Júpiter in the Baroque zarzuela El imposible mayor en amor, le vence amor, attributed to Sebastián Durón, brought her back to Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela in March. 2015 – 2016’s new rôles bring Vivica’s operatic repertory to sixty-two rôles, forty of which are travesti rôles.
In addition to the Glossa recording of I Capuleti ed i Montecchi, new releases during the 2015 – 2016 Season include Giacomo Meyerbeer's Emma di Resburgo on the Newplay Entertainment label; a box-set collection of three of Vivica's iconic recital discs on ERATO, issued in October 2015; Ferdinando Bertoni's L'Orfeo, scheduled for release on the fra bernardo label in January 2016 [USA street date 25 March 2016]; and Baroque Divas, released on DECCA in November 2015. Among her numerous recordings on CD and DVD, Vivica is especially proud of her participation in gala concerts benefiting the German AIDS Foundation, available on DVD.
Highlights of Vivica’s 2014 – 2015 Season included taking part in performances of Mozart's Requiem and Piet Swerts's oratorio Le sack de Louvain given in commemoration of the invasion of the city of Leuwen at the start of World War One and, celebrating the release of the Sony recording Rival Queens, joining soprano Simone Kermes and Cappella Gabetta in a tour devoted to music composed for Eighteenth-Century divas Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni.